Why Can't Everywhere Just Be Hawaii?

I was in Hawaii for ten days, way too long to document in its glorious entirety through the give-it-to-me-quick medium of the blog. So here are the highlights, best bits and weirdest things that happened during my short but sweet time in paradise.


North Shore 
It made logistical sense to use the rental car for long distances while we had it, and North Beach - home to pro surfers across the seven seas - would be at least a day long trip. Off we sped, to the Waimea Bay the Beach Boys sing of in Surfin' USA and about five miles from shore, so tantalisingly close that we could smell the spray coming off the big-ass waves, we hit traffic. Proper chocker.

There's only one way in and out of Waimea and its popularity means that street is in deadlock traffic most of the time, each vehicle stacked with at least two surfboards and crammed with beach bummers winding themselves up into an increasing state of tension.
We brainstormed, cursed the cars in a variety of putrid English, Swedish and Australian, then rerouted to a closer seaside town where the water was just as mental. After a hearty lunch of fresh fish tacos (I was infatuated) we sat watching the water on the warm sand, marvelling at the fearlessness of surfer kids smashing themselves and their boogie boards into the churning blue ocean. All three of us spotted a sea turtle at the same time, its shadow tracing over the top of the plundering waves, and squealed in unison with unadulterated glee.

Pearl Harbour All I really know about Pearl Harbour and the devastation that took place there seventy-odd years ago I learned from the Hollywood blockbuster of the same name. After failing to see the DiCap and Wahlberg stalking the streets of Boston, I wasn't holding out any hopes of Ben Affleck waiting for me at the door in WW2 period dress.

However, there were a few other stunning models about - sleek submarines and out-of-service battleships lined the harbour while the occasional troupe of choppers or military aircraft painted the skies overhead with dainty white skids.
This was one of the best things I did in Hawaii - the trip to the USS Arizona memorial (under which the actual ship lay, many of its boys imprisoned in the underwater grave since that horrible morning in 1944) was free of charge, as were two of the exhibitions explaining Japan's ambush and the US response, as well as the interior of a small submarine. Decommissioned missiles dotted in the broad, mowed lawns gave us the perfect slivers of shade to escape the heat sizzling out of the white concrete under our flip flopped feet. You could probably spend the whole day there, and we might have done, were we not in such a hurry to get to the Aloha Stadium up the road to haggle with stall-holders at the weekend market for souvenirs and plucky ukeles.

Diamond Head There are no diamonds in this crater on the south east corner of Wakiki Beach, I discovered like many before me as I sweated and clambered up to the top (cheap day out, entry only costs $1 if you walk in, $5 for cars). The trek started out easily enough with gentle slopes leading to corners upon which you could gaze at windswept panoramas. Then came the stairs.
Some were cut directly out of the rock, crumbing, some covered with soft moss with only a rusty handrail for support and guidance. A lot of the elderly seemed to be attempting the mountain the Sunday I went, taking up entire swathes of the path with their zimmer frames, false teeth and IV drips while I was forced to dodge around them.
One lady seemed to think high heels were suitable for the hike. While pushing a pram loaded with a child that probably could have made it using its own two feet. Oh well, I guess it was their holiday too. After three sets of stairs and a stupidly dark tunnel, I made it to Diamond Head's summit and revelled in a rare sense of accomplishment. Fabulous view.

Surf School Every morning, I'd set my alarm for 7am in the hope that I'd be able to motivate myself to get up and pop down to the beach for a $30, hour long Early Bird surf lesson with the Star Boy instructors. But each morning, some sort of crisis would arise - dry mouth, headache, couldn't find my goggles. Until my last morning when it became a case of now or never.
The swell isn't particularly dangerous in Waikiki (compared to North Shore) but enough to make you worry when you're trying to balance on top of the water. I spent three quarters of the one hour lesson gulping sea water, gathering bruises and cuts on my elbows and accidentally slicing myself on a rogue piece of coral, incurring a cut on the sole of my left foot. It stung suggesting there was blood but in the adrenaline flow, I didn't even stop to think about sharks.
'When I say paddle, PADDLE', Kenny my instructor instructed superbly as we bounced in the sea. 'When I say stand up, YOU STAND UP'. Cheers, got that. The board caught the wave and I shot forwards towards the beach. 'STAND UP, ABHA!! STAND UP!' How was Kenny so loud over the waves?
I crept my knees forward, balancing on my palms, then brought my left leg up before finally swivelling on my right so I was upright. I was so surprised not to fall immediately over, I began cheering like an idiot and in my celebration, failed to spot a small child on a small surfboard, about thirty metres away, directly in my line of fire. 'Moooove!' I screamed at him. Too late. I jumped off just before we made impact, causing my own board to whack me in the head, coming up spluttering to see if I had maimed the tiny tot. He was still perched above his board, huge eyes dotted with bits of the sea or tears. Shit. I didn't stay to find out. 'You're alright, aren't you?', I threw back over my shoulder as I paddled away from him and my shame towards Kenny.

Booze Cruise, Christmas and Karaoke Queens Christmas time, lack of mistletoe made up for the copious amounts of wine. We began the Hawaiian Chrimbo celebobs in excellent style, heading to a catamaran that offered a two hour sail along Waikiki with an open bar for a mere $25. I collected my chums and we made our way to the Moana Surfrider Hotel, outside which the vessel was moored. It wasn't the best day weatherwise, but it was Christmas Eve and we pretty much had the run of the boat so we set about the challenge of drinking the bar dry and attempting to spot whales in the distance. There was a sighting, but I missed it because I was chatting with a pot-bellied Canadian about the merits of holidaying on the Mexican peninsula (never been, but he didn't know that).

Karin was the best Lad On Tour, downing mai tais like they were cookies and she the Cookie Monster, although each of us was trying to do her best, and keep the honour of her country intact. Representin'. Perhaps it was the sway of the boat, maybe they were being a bit tight with the drink, but none of us really felt the effects until we were back on the sand. Then they hit us like a sodding tidal wave. 

On Christmas Day, we carried ourselves and our vile hangovers to the cinema to watch Tarantino's latest, Django Unchained. Nothing says 'good tidings' like a bit of slavery, bloody executions and horrific torture.
We spent the late hours of the day wailing out Christmas songs in a hole-in-the-wall karaoke bar where the drinks were cheap and everyone was gay. I FINALLY got given a flower lei and celebrated by screeching to Chuck Berry's Johnny B. Goode.

Perfecto Chrimbo.

OooOoOooo I Can See Your Honolulu

Other than Graceland, Hawaii was the place I was most looking forward to visiting when planning this trip. Aside from New Orleans. And Memphis, of course. But Honolulu was capitalised, italicised, underscored and highlighted in BOLD in both my homemade travel schedule and my whirrly little mind.

It's the sort of place you daydream about while writing completely useless summaries about Anthony Worrall Thompson shoplifting cheese from a Tesco in Henley-on-Thames at 3.18 a.m on a Thursday morning. WHO CARES? It was probably only a cry for attention. He's not so hot these days, is old Ant. Anyway, back to my holiday hard-on.

HAWAII and all her pleasures; palm trees and sunshine-happy ukele music, warm sand and skilled surfers, grass skirts and ham and pineapple pizza. Bloody paradise. I remember doing a 30-second jig after clicking on the confirm button to book my flight and gurning like I was at my first festival for about four hours afterwards. Excited doesn't even cover it. I was champing at the bit to get out there.

It takes six hours to fly to Honolulu on the island of Oahu from LAX and the islands, the most remote chain in the world, is two hours behind Pacific Standard Time - basically making it the end of the world. I would be ten whole hours behind almost everyone I know. After waving goodbye to Leah and whiling away two days in grungy Venice Beach eating 7-Eleven pizza and catching up on the latest series of Dexter, I travelled to LAX at about 11pm the day before my flight to sit out the eight hours before I could board the plane and dream all the way to paradise.


For entertainment, I pretended to be Tom Hanks in Terminal and shuffled around the departures lounge mumbling emotionally in a made up language from a fictional country, before finding the softest piece of marble I could to try and snooze for a few hours before the check-in kiosks opened.
For anyone thinking about ever sleeping at the airport: if you can avoid it, do. If not, purchase an inflatable mattress. It is NOT easy nesting.

I got on the plane and tucked myself into my seat, finally falling asleep before the engines got going. My neighbour very sweetly shoved his soft, fat elbow into my face just as the islands came into view underneath us hours later, allowing me to lean all the way over from the aisle to the window to catch my first glimpse.

It was a photoshopped world I was staring down into, everything popping out in bright technicolour and looking sparkly and fun and happy and Aloha. Absolutely beautiful. 

Hawaii may be a stunner but its also one of the most expensive places I've been to. The starting price for most items seemed to be $10, and that was considered a good deal. With my bank account dwindling, budget was the order of the day. Google pointed me in the direction of Waikiki Backpackers Hostel, which had good reviews, and more importantly, offered travellers two UNLIMITED beer nights a week, for free. I was staying for ten days over Christmas, so this had to be taken strongly into consideration. They also offered a complimentary shuttle service from Honolulu airport if you were staying for four days or more.
Yes please.

bezzie mates

Two blocks from Waikiki Beach, the hostel is a former motel and each room has been converted into dorms that sleep four. You get your own kitchenette and bathroom in the room, which is pretty handy for storing supermarket-bought beer. At its helm is the owner, Charles, a well-built Nigerian man who used to be in the British Army and who reminisced with me extensively about England and J.D Wetherspoons' curry nights. You can't get a decent curry in Hawaii, it seems. Charles seemed pleased to have another British accent knocking about the place and as he left, promised to bring me a can of cider the next night.

I had managed to turn up on Tuesday, one of the free beer nights, so got stuck in chatting with my fellow hostellers and worked on becoming increasingly shit faced before we all piled into the minivan at 10 p,m and were driven to Moose McGillycuddy's, a ridiculously-named rowdy bar in the city where drinks remarkably, only cost $1 that night. NO BLOODY TAX ADDED ON, EITHER.


I waved my $5 bill like I was in Her Maj's inner circle, graciously buying drinks for my new chums and throwing out unique dance moves to the pop music under the strobe lighting. It was just like a school disco, except with lei's, mai tais and lots and lots of military personnel. I chatted with a Marine (there are a ton based on the island) and egged on a German girl looking at a bit of beef that had caught her eye across the crowded bar. A superb night out.

I'd promised myself I'd go surfing the next morning. Obviously I would have been a complete natural. However I failed spectacularly to wake up in time for the Early Bird Special ($30 for an hour's lesson on Waikiki - but only before 8 a.m) so ended up heading to the Dole Pineapple Factory on the local bus system, which took an hour and a half and very nearly robbed me of my will to live.

It took FOREVER going all round the houses and back again to visit the driver's grandma. I sassed quietly in the back, but not too loudly because I'm a scaredy cat and didn't want to get chucked off the bloody thing in the middle of nowhere. Also, I was in Hawaii and had no right to be moody about the slow-pace of everything.

The Dole Factory was horrendous, hugely overpriced ($8 for a packet of dried pineapple. What in holy hell?) and inexplicably, sold pearls in oysters at every corner. What do unshucked oysters have to do with the seeding, harvesting and distribution of pineapples? I may die before I find out.
Seeing as it took so long to get there, the least I could do was treat myself to a ride on the Pineapple Express, a fire-red train that takes visitors around the pineapple fields and explains the history of the factory in a neat twenty minute ride. The pictures would have been nicer if the sun had gotten its act together that day, but it didn't, so here's what I got:

no idea pineapple grew like that

this cockrel was trying to shake off the advances of a LUSTY peacock

I wandered back to the bus stop and waited for my ride home, stopping in a shopping centre to hear Hawaiian Christmas carols before meandering along Waikiki beach to the hostel. The cheapest drinks the local ABC stores (sort of like a Sainsbury's Local) sold was the same brand of Californian champagne I had toasted my 26th birthday to with Leah in Monterey. Seven bucks and it didn't taste like a urinal in a strip club. THAT'LL DO. 

I took my loot back to the hostel's teeny common area and shared it with my new room-mate, Martina from Sweden. Martina was on holiday with her mate Karin, who was fast asleep in our room, exhausted from the trek halfway across the world. She mentioned they'd hired a car for the next three days and would I like to join her and two other Swedes on a road trip to the east coast the next day?

Four Swedes and Abha packed into one rental car?

There is only one appropriate way to end this post, and it is with this video >>>

Eight Ways to Stay Sassy in NOLA

Feeling less fierce? Sass levels dwindling? Fix up, look sharp. Here's how we kept the attitude topped up in the US Capital of Sass; New Orleans, Lousiana (NOLA).

1. LIVE SASSY 
Book a bed at the Best Hostel of All Time, the AAE Bourbon House New Orleans run by a peroxide-haired bombshell and Sass Commodore-in-Chief, Jayson. He is the only hostel manager to date to wake me up and drag me to Walmart in search of turducken with all the trimmings for Thanksgiving dinner.
Whether you're in the mood for sass or not, it could be hurled at you from across the garden or handed to you sweetly on a paper plate, alongside your barbecued franks and potato salad. It all depends on the waxing phases of the moon. 

2. DRINK SASSY

Indulge in some of that pre-loading David Cameron is always banging on about by procuring a two-litre bottle of $10 vodka from Walmart. Amatuer Sass Cadets can begin with starter bottles of Bud Light Lime while the more sophisticated and refined have a tasty bottle of wine to turn to. The vodka vanished alarmingly quickly thanks to the obscene measures being poured by the Gassonimator. Before we knew it we'd been vacuum packed into a convoy of taxi cabs and whirled out to NOLA's drinking-and-mugging hot spot Bourbon Street. Here the streets are rained on by alcohol, cheap carnival beads and STDs. Already meatballing around the pavement, a kind soul threw me a Hand Grenade and three minutes after imbibing it, the cocktail shot through my veins and exploded like an a-bomb right behind my eyes. 

3. FIND AND FRIEND FELLOW SASSERS

solid life motto

This was one of those rare fantastic times when the planets align and the cosmos conspires so that we were in the right hostel with the right people at the right time. Our fellow hostellers were all a bunch of right wrong 'uns, a good mix of Australians (all from Melbourne, weirdly), a scattering of American and the rest, British. There was a news editor from the Beeb goading an erotic dancer from Portland Oregon who looked exactly like K-Stew, the Real Inbetweeners (four English boys studying in Illinois had come down to Naaaawlins for Thanksgiving break and they were the living, breathing Will, Neil, Jay and Simon. They hated that we immediately christened them the Inbetweeners, but not more than they hated being called One Direction), a pair of Scottish LADs interning at a Texan oil firm and two Brummie girls, cool in black with heavy eyeliner and tattooed arms.
The evening was young and ours to claim. 


4. FLASH YOUR SASS ON BOURBON STREET

Rules for Bourbon Sass include: partnering your hand with a drink at all times, smearing yours and others' face with gold glitter and Vaseline, administering sass at a bar to cut through the queue, sassing with aplomb on the dance floor, duckfacing those with inferior levels of sass while sucking on a neon jelly shot in syringes, snapping fingers at raasclat bouncers who, though younger than you, still require checking your ID, dishing out some smartass sass to poets trying to sell haikus and ditties on the pavement, withstanding a Hurricane cocktail, hailing a cab without passing out, throwing up without getting any vom on your only Going Out top. All with nothing less than optimum sass.



5. FESTIVE SASS
Thanksgiving in America is up there with Christmas in terms of ceremony, decoration and excessive carb consumption. With our newly formed NOLA Collective, we decided to trawl through the aisles of Walmart to create a feast of our very own. I was tasked with making a carrot and orange salad, which managed to go awry the minute I picked up the grater. However, Leah saved the day with her Mother Hen routine and spent most of the afternoon in the kitchen, sweating out her dishgushting hangover over trays of crispy roast potatoes and parsnips.


6. BLACK FRIDAY SASS
Back at Walmart, elbows at the ready and the fire for a true bargain burning in our hearts, we braced ourselves and pushed into the fray. There was a netbook for $188 with my name on it. We got there and Darrell the department manager informed us that all twenty six had sold out. What kind of company stocks just twenty six laptops on a day as serious as Black Friday?!
INITIATE SASS.
'Na uh honey. OH NO. Whaaaaaat, you bein' serious?!' Jayson sassed, hip jutting to one side and hair quivering with rage. He assumed the duckface and went off into one, demanding the number for Walmart HQ, then flirting with him before threatening lesser staff members with letters of complaint at this shoddy display of retail incompetency.
I was glad he was on our side, fighting on my behalf for this  injustice. One Walmart worker, inevitably called Shaniqua, had four gold teeth in the front of her mouth and looked as though she could knock my burgeoning sass right out of the state if I tried it. She and Jayson tangoed in a crazy sass war, but then Jayson got distracted by half price duvets and my netbook was lost forever. 



7. CASUAL SASS
I managed to meet up with a super-stylist chum who was in NOLA on fashion business. Unfortunately this was the morning after the night before and I was accessorised with bits of glitter in untamed hair and gloopy eye bogey. I stumbled out of a cab at 10.55a.m, feeling like my internal organs had been blow dried, by a mile-and-a-half long queue outside Cafe Le Monde in the French quarter. Alcohol still seeping out of my skin and sticking to my frock in the warm November sun. I found Buntface and we ran into each other's arms by a street performer in the middle of yowling to Michael Jackson's BAD. Then we went to a record shop and got clawed by the owner's kitten before falling into a pub for burgers and bread and butter pudding. Casual, like.
On the walk home I watched a woman strangling a fish on the banks of the Mississippi and found five hundred rupees in a park. Moral of the story: Sass is as sass does.

christmas tree merboy sass

8. DILUTING SASS DURING CRISIS-TIMES
Once upon a time a douchebag came to Nawlins for his 21st bday. He was the kind of livelong moron who hunts down a party with ferocious hunger and the gleam of embarrassing desperation in his eyes. I BETTER FIND SOME FUN OR FUN'S GONNA BE IN TROUBLE. Birthday Douche drank all day. He drank all afternoon and into the early evening. By 7pm he had completed his transformation into a fully developed douchebag and could barely stand. Still, he drinky, raising the odds of getting punched in the face as the minutes slipped by. Oh, Birthday Douche was in for some ass-whoppery tonight.
New Orleans tradition dictates that birthday boys and girls pin a dollar bill to their top and people give them money to celebrate, so Birthday Douche does this. But Twattiness is a stench sniffed out and avoided by humans and dogs a mile off so no  $$$ for him, yo.  We shed ourselves of him and his insufferable ilk and headed out into the warm Friday night, dancing gleefully in a Bourbon whirl before very nearly setting my hair alight in a candle-lit, firehazard-worthy bar. I later found Birthday Douche, on his knees in the hostel bathroom, full blown crisis raging in the middle of the night.  He had fallen out of the cab in front of the hostel and cracked his jaw on the pavement. Now blood was gushing profusely from his douchey chin. Somebody had rung for an ambulance. Everyone had come out of their dorms to watch his pitful mewling and highly public meltdown. ENTER SASS. He twitched while I talked, trying to dial down the sass and calm him down while still taking the piss as much as I could. 'It's okay you massive vagine, that's not the real Grim Reaper you're seeing', I laughed at his falling-down-drunkeness 'No mate, no. No one's laughing at you. That's from inside your head. Twat'. He looked confused, unsure. HAHAHAHAAHHA. He deserved no mercy. Earlier in the evening he had chest-bumped his friend in the middle of chugging his Modelo beer and screamed  'PARTTTTEEE' into the sweet Lousiana sky. I had simply shared a look with Leah and Goodluck Jonathan, our favourite of the Australians. 'Someone concuss this guy, please' the look had said. He should have been issued a detention slip and been sat facing the corner wearing a Dunce hat instead of allowed out with the grown-ups that evening. 
Birthday Douche caught the word 'ambulance' and bolted like a disabled gazelle into the street, flailing and wailing at the intersection where the bored paramedics were parked. Costs around $7k to call out an ambulance in these parts, if you don't have health insurance. SUCKA. I should have sold popcorn, it was such a great show. After about ten minutes, I tired of watching him run away in pathetic slow motion from the medics (who admirably crawled behind him at 0.3mph rather than running the imbecile over) and clambered into bed, falling asleep in my mascara and strands of Mardi Gras beads.

DOUUUUUUUUUCHE

p.s - Stay sassy.